June 2008Marantz CD5001 CD PlayerExcellent build quality, easy to use, and
impressive sound for the price.Review By Clarke RobinsonClick here to e-mail reviewer

The music industry is going
through interesting times right now. "Interesting", that is, in the Chinese
proverbial sense: the compact disc, the industry's golden goose since the
mid-‘80s, is on the wane. Complaints about the cold, direct sound of "digititis"
have sent audiophiles retreating to vinyl, while mass-market consumers flock to
the convenience and attractive price points of digital downloads. The dedicated
CD player has become (like the turntable, paradoxically enough) something of a
boutique item.

Regardless of its uncertain future, for the time being the CD
is unquestionably the most popular medium of music distribution. As I write
this, Amazon.com reports over 2,000 new releases on the shiny discs this week
alone. However, if you want a simple component that holds and plays just one CD
at a time and (oh, the horror) don't want to spend $1000 for it, your choices
are surprisingly limited. If you want to spend less than $500, you can almost
count your options on one hand.

The CD5001 is Marantz' response to the situation. The $300
player was introduced nearly three years ago (replacing, inexplicably, the
apparently identical CD5400) at the entry level of their disc-spinning products.
In that time the CD5001 has developed a good reputation among budget-minded
audiophiles, so much that I was curious enough to contact Marantz' PR agent in
New York, and took delivery of a review sample just a few weeks later.

Any Color You Want As Long As It Is Black

The
CD5001 sports Marantz' usual black, brushed aluminum faceplate, giving it a
handsome look not found in most mass-market components. It's not particularly
heavy, and the CD tray wobbles around a bit when jostled, but performs no worse
in this area than some players I've seen at 15x the price. The back panel boasts
both coaxial and optical digital outs, as well as typical unbalanced RCAs. Front
panel controls are neatly laid out and responsive, and the remote is excellent,
with good sized buttons that are clearly labeled and spaced-out well enough for
even the most fat-fingered audiophile.

Stupid CD Player Tricks (New Segment on
Letterman?)

Kidding aside, none of the CD5001's features are stupid, but a
few of them are somewhat esoteric in nature, and not often seen at this (or any
other) price point. And they are:

Pitch Control: This changes playback speed, with the obvious
effect of changing the pitch of the music being played. Pitch can be adjusted up
or down one octave in whole-step increments. The idea here is to give musicians
(and vocalists in particular) the ability to perform along with recordings in
the key of their choice. Sadly, the unit will not play CDs in reverse, so all
those secret messages in your ‘70s rock albums will just have to remain
confined to vinyl....

Peak Search: This scans an entire CD to find the loudest
passage. It doesn't do it particularly quickly; taking over six minutes to scan
a 70-minute disc, but might have been useful to me back in the ‘80s as a home
taper, as may have the next feature:

Simple
Edit: By selecting a tape length (46, 54, 60, 75, and 90-minute options are
available) the CD5001 divides a disc's tracks in to two groups (without changing
their original order) so they fit on each side of a tape. It inserts a 4-second
pause between tracks, and (if a Marantz-brand auto-reverse tape deck is being
used) can start recording and turn the tape over automatically at the
appropriate time. Fancy!

Headphone Amp: Sporting its own volume pot, the CD5001's
headphone jack is driven by an NJM4556, the same OpAmp used in the Grado RA-1
Headphone Amplifier. Interestingly, the Marantz fell short of the RA-1 when
driving Grado SR-225 headphones, lacking bass authority and overall volume
output; but performed remarkably well with my higher-impedance Sennheiser
HD-580s. A Marantz/Sennheiser combo would be a welcome addition to any bedside
table or dorm room.

Overall, an interesting set of features that demonstrates a
spirit of fun and creativity in Marantz' engineering department, and even among
the suits who must have approved their inclusion. They may even serve as a
cost-cutting measure: hi-fi fashion dictates that high-end components must have
clean, minimalist front panels; if these features had been left off (and their
corresponding buttons removed from the fascia), Marantz may have had to charge
more for the player!

The Sound

The entire time I had the CD5001 in my system, the unit never
failed to produce clean, accurate music that was a pleasure to listen to. It
calls very little attention to itself, and has an overall sonic character that
is pleasantly neutral. Detail retrieval is adequate, and the player had no
problems with CD-Rs or discs that were moderately scratched.

My normal source is the $150 Sony SCD-CE595 (reviewed
back in 2005 by our own "Joe Audiophile", Scott Faller). Casually
switching between the two over the course of the review period, I got the vague
impression that the Marantz was slightly
smoother, while the Sony had slightly
more high-end extension. I was unable to reliably confirm this in level-matched
listening tests, but for whatever reason, the vague impression remains.

Of course, the Sony unit also plays SACDs, something the
Marantz can't do. Performing a fair comparison of SACD to Redbook CD is tricky,
because the different layers in a Hybrid SACD are often subject to different
mastering. According to recording engineer Jim Anderson, his 2001 SACD of
Terence Blanchard's Let's Get Lost
is identical to the Redbook release except for the resolution. The session was
recorded and mixed on analog tape, mastered in DSD with the Redbook release
being downstream of the DSD master. This means it is one of the few albums
suitable for a true CD versus SACD "shootout". Sonic differences were minimal
but detectable: nothing really stood out in the overall presentation of either
one, but the SACD sounded a touch more lifelike. The singers seemed a bit more
forward in the soundstage on the Marantz, whereas on SACD they seemed more
integrated with the band. The sound was close enough on my system that, if the
price points were reversed, I would not think it worth the upgrade. But hey, I'm
cheap.

Later on, I ran the CD5001 against a friend's Benchmark DAC1
PRE ($1575, the original, non-preamp version was reviewed
by Dick Olsher in 2005), listening on his Linkwitz Orions (among the
most resolving speakers I've ever heard). The Benchmark demonstrated a slight
improvement in dynamics, and the session also revealed a faint touch of digital
hash in the upper register on the Marantz.

How faint? We tried an ABX test to see if I could tell the
Marantz from the Benchmark without looking. Out of four trials, I got the first
two right and the second two wrong. Now, hardcore ABX enthusiasts will tell you
that, 1.) four trials is not enough to establish statistical significance; and
2.) a 50/50 score indicates that I was guessing, and thus the two components
sound identical (hardcore ABX detractors will tell you the whole exercise is a
waste of time). My theory is that I really
could hear the Marantz' top-end artifacts in the first two trials,
but it took so much effort that I got fatigued, and could no longer pick them
out in the next two.

Feel free to draw your own conclusions about our ABX test (or
about my listening abilities), but I think that most everyone would agree that
the differences between the Marantz and any of the digital components I had on
hand are, at best, extremely subtle. Later on, we played the opening ten minutes
of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet
(a performance my friend is intimately familiar with), first on the Marantz,
then again through the Benchmark. He said that through the Marantz he listened
to it, but through the Benchmark he was conducting
it…he had a more vivid, emotional reaction to the music through the Benchmark.
Impossible to support with any measurements or A/B testing, this data point
could be nothing…or it could be everything. I didn't find listening to the
Benchmark quite so revelatory (although I wouldn't kick it out my system if I
had one), but keep in mind this was his
system, and one of his favorite
pieces of music.

Buying Advice

Digital audio is getting better and less expensive all the
time (thanks mostly, I believe, to engineers at major audio chip manufacturers
like Texas Instruments, National Semiconductor, etc.). The Marantz CD5001
demonstrates that perfectly enjoyable digital sound is available to anyone
willing to spend a few hundred dollars. Truth be told, I've never found anything
but minute differences between any two digital source components... In my
opinion, those who talk of dramatic "night and day" differences between one CD
player and another are either exaggerating (a common practice among audiophiles
and members of the audio press) or in possession of a debilitating sensitivity
(another common practice among audiophiles and members of the audio press).
While sonic differences between digital source components do exist, they don't
make as much impact on the overall enjoyment of my audio system as factors like
price or ergonomics.

Overall, I was impressed with the CD5001. The build quality,
ease of use, ergonomic comfort in the remote, and ultimately the sound are all
excellent for the price. Is it the best CD player in the world? Well, no…but
it could be all the CD player you need, and for $300, it certainly gets my
recommendation.